There are fears that at least 100 eole are still traed under the landslide in Ambegaon village in western India [Xinhua]

Rescue workers labored through the night and into the morning Thursday to search for at least 100 people believed trapped under a landslide caused by two days of torrential rains in Ambegaon village in the Pune district in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

It took the 250 rescue personnel and nearly 100 ambulances several hours to reach the remote village, some 150km south of Mumbai, as travel on already poor roads was hampered by the heavy rains.

They arrived to find a scene of carnage – an entire section of the adjacent hill had fallen on the village of 40 families and buried 70 houses. Dozens of other homes were damaged, press reports indicated.

At press time, local authorities said that they had recovered 21 bodies and expected the death toll to rise.

On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his sadness at the loss of lives and conveyed his condolences.

He pledged that New Delhi would expend all possible efforts to rescue survivors and do all it can for the families of the victims.

The Pune District Magistrate told local media that there were fears of more landslides in other villages in the area.

57 founding members, many of them prominent US allies, will sign into creation the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank on Monday, the first major global financial instrument independent from the Bretton Woods system.

Representatives of the countries will meet in Beijing on Monday to sign an agreement of the bank, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Thursday. All the five BRICS countries are also joining the new infrastructure investment bank.

The agreement on the $100 billion AIIB will then have to be ratified by the parliaments of the founding members, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said at a daily press briefing in Beijing.

The AIIB is also the first major multilateral development bank in a generation that provides an avenue for China to strengthen its presence in the world’s fastest-growing region.